New biomarker method could increase cancer diagnostic tests

[Source: ScienceDaily] -- A team of researchers, including several from UCSF, has demonstrated that a new method for detecting and quantifying protein biomarkers in body fluids may ultimately make it possible to screen multiple biomarkers in hundreds of patient samples, thus ensuring that only the strongest biomarker candidates will advance down the development pipeline. The researchers have developed a method to increase accuracy in detecting real cancer biomarkers that is highly reproducible across laboratories and a variety of instruments so that cancer can be detected in its earliest stages.

The results of the Clinical Proteomic Technology Assessment for Cancer (CPTAC) study, which is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) appear online June 28, 2009, in Nature Biotechnology.